Monday, August 29, 2005

Crash on the levee

High water risin', six inches 'bove my headCoffins droppin' in the streetLike balloons made out of lead - Bob Dylan

Most North Americans grew up in a steady-state universe. When things were bad, they were also largely dependable. And that could be a grace, too, because even catastrophes observed rules we could live by.

We knew, if we paid attention in science class, that things would change. Eventually. We knew, maybe, that we were forcing some of them to change, by refusing to change ourselves. We knew we were living only a moment of history, but it was hard to conceive of living some other moment, in which perhaps the bad things did not respect human scale and expectation.

Still, here we are, in another moment, where dystopic hyperbole has leached into wire stories with headlines such as "Experts Expect Katrina to Turn New Orleans Into Atlantis." I'm expecting the storm to weaken enough that the worst-case will not be realized. I'm hoping so for the poorest of New Orleans, who "chose" not to leave because they couldn't, and have been sitting up all night in the Superdome. But Katrina is already the 11th hurricane this season; that's eight more than have ever before been recorded at this time of year. The storms are increasing in frequency and ferocity, and will continue to do so as the Gulf Stream fails. All that heat has to go somewhere.

Climate Change is a challenge to our frames of reference. We've known storms before, but storms likethese, this often? We've known extreme temperatures, but we've never seen the glaciers retreat and the pack ice melt at such a pace and scale. The old assurances of how bad it can get have been breached, and projected extremes are edging out of the narrow band of conditions conducive to global civilization and perhaps even complex life. And it's not the environment alone that goes begging for precedents. (And I don't think it's a coincidence that it's not.) Politically, economically, metaphysically even, we're all suddenly in over our heads without having moved an inch. And perhaps we should have moved, because the flood was forecast years ago. But like the people in the Superdome, we had nowhere else to go.

The Eye of Isabel, Sept 2003

Water pourin' into Vicksburg, don't know what I'm going to do."Don't reach out for me," she said"Can't you see I'm drownin' too?"

1236 Comments:

Isn't it strange that much of the city of New Orleans could be gone so quickly? A city we have always looked at as stable. Gone, in a moment.

I guess life is like that. Big things so unbelievable that we never let them happen, or refuse the reality of them. Yet they happen, they truly do.

And when they do, we are shocked. Because so often we see how important we are in the big picture. And its a scary thought for most of us, who would prefer to be small, insignificant. Yet we are all very, very, important! :)

This hurricane acted so unusual, my antenna went up. Anyone know much about the military project, H.A.A.R.P.? Here's a brief description: High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, HAARP (1993)The HAARP Program is jointly managed by the US Air Force and the US Navy, and is based in Gakona, Alaska. It is designed to "understand, simulate and control ionospheric processes that might alter the performance of communication and surveillance systems." The HAARP system intends to beam 3.6 Gigawatts of effective radiated power of high frequency radio energy into the ionosphere in order to:

Generate extremely low frequency (ELF) waves for communicating with submerged submarines Conduct geophysical probes to identify and characterize natural ionospheric processes so that techniques can be developed to mitigate or control them Generate ionospheric lenses to focus large amounts of high frequency energy, thus providing a means of triggering ionospheric processes that potentially could be exploited for Department of Defense purposes, Electron acceleration for infrared (IR) and other optical emissions which could be used to control radio wave propagation properties Generate geomagnetic field aligned ionization to control the reflection/scattering properties of radio waves, Use oblique heating to produce effects on radio wave propagation, thus broadening the potential military applications of ionospheric enhancement technology.

Just exactly what capabilities for ionospheric control exist? I'm suspicious....

Back when I believed that the attacks of 9/11 were perpetrated by a foreign terrorist group, one thing that really struck me was the weather that day.

"The weather conditions along the entire eastern seaboard were what pilots call "severe clear" - bright and sunny with almost limitless visibility"

telegraph.co.uk 16 December 2001

Severe clear accross the entire Northeastern United States in early September? Nobody gets that lucky. And, nobody could make a plan -- such a plan would certainly benefit greatly if not absolutely depend on such conditions -- and just hope for the incredibly unlikely. The date, I then concluded, had to be arbitrary. The teams would have had to be on ready to go stand-by, possibly for weeks, waiting for someone with access to some really top-knotch weather forecasting to give the signal.

As I learned more about what happened that day, this became yet another irregular piece that did not fit in with the rest of the puzzle. When I finally realized the pattern I was trying to follow was completely wrong and I set about reassembling the pieces around a whole new theory, I realized that the date of September 11 was not at all arbitrary. But, if the date was not arbitrary, the weather had to be.

Okay, global warming may turn out to be a real problem - but equally well it may not, and a sudden rush of hurricanes doesn't mean anything either way.

No one disputes the earth is warming right now; the dispute is over whether this is man-made and/or dangerous. Let's remember it's natural for the weather to change a lot and sometimes very fast (the last Ice Age ended in a few decades. The weather was a lot warmer during the Medieval Warm Period than it is now, and a lot colder during the Little Ice Age that followed, and which only stopped about a hundred years ago. We are still warming up from that, and what we think of as our 'normal' climate has only existed since about 1890. Recent changes might seem new and catastrophic to us, but in earth terms, they are quite usual.

Sure, they MAY be an indicator of hidden dangers, but there's also many other possibilities that are perhaps more probable.A decade of warmer weather, or a few years of increased hurricane activity are all quite normal in the geological time scale of climate variability. You'd need a trend of at least a hundred years, but actually much more, to be able to show any actual unprecedented shift in climate beyond the usual.

That's why most responsible climate scientists are saying there MAY BE an effect and advising reducing emissions as a precaution (it certainly would do no harm). The idea that man-made climate change is a proven reality and that every weather-anomaly is a symptom of it is simply spin, and I suspect, designed for similar reasons to the flood of so-called 'killer-bug' stories that are also being fed to us; to scare us into passivity, despair and hopelessness.

So, let's be responsible and report ALL the facts, not just a few of the usual decontextualised media-soundbites.

BTW - I do agree we should cut emissions and invest in alternative fuels. I think Kyoto makes sense for numerous reasons to do with pollution and management of resources, I just happen to be able to see that the story of 'dangerous man-made global warming' is too tenuous and too spun to be bought at this stage without questioning the motives of those selling it to us.

Didn't Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison try/succeed? to get a bill passed that would allow for weather control technology to be officially used by the US military? This was a bill from back in March. I never heard any more about it.Here in Louisiana, we're all holding our breath. My New Orleans friends were totally taken by surprise by the power and fury of Katrina and fled with hardly any preparation.

I'm glad mamadrama mentioned HAARP, because this was my first thought when I heard about this hurricane.

Folks, they've been controlling the weather now for some time. I know it sounds strange to some, but the U.S. military has been interested in it for some time, and application of such technology for defense purposes has recently been made into a mandate by the Pentagon.

Scott Stevens, the meteorologist at KPVI-TV in eastern Idaho, maintains a compelling web site devoted to the topic, and at this point believes that our entire weather system is artificially manipulated, and that there's basically no such thing as natural, organic weather anymore.

Essentially, Hoagland has theorized a hyperdimensional component to hurricanes based on years of rigorous research into the now-mainstream concept of the interaction of energies from other dimensions upon our own as being an integral part of our reality which predictably and accurately explains many unexplainable things.

There exist on the Internet groups of trained psycics and psycics in training who use the power of collective intention organized via weekly online chats to blast predatory sources of evil such as those discussed with great regularity on this blog with the love energy of the heart chakra, which is shown to disable predators and craft positive intention into reality, just like the D.C. meditation study mentioned in the highly-recommended film What The Bleep Do We Know?.

These same groups, by the way, have found a killer tool against the NWO which looks like our best hope of waking people up, dissolving chemtrails, disabling HAARP clouds, and restoring energetic balance against the darkness. It's called orgonite, and is based on the etheric energy research of Dr. Wilhelm Reich. It's easy to make, easy to deploy, and even easier to see that it actually has a real, noticeable effect on anything which comes within proximity. Orgonite causes all the negative energy in an area to be transmuted into positive energy, which creates more consistent, noticeable and repeatable real-world effects than I can get into in this one lengthy post.

I urge everyone to read the material presented in this posting and evaluate it for yourself. Read up on orgonite. Try making or buying some and seek your own confirmations of its effectiveness. If anyone would like more information, speak up and I'll post more. Otherwise I'll drop it right here, as I've probably overloaded you as it is. :-)

To Ellie, It is not true that "the weather was a lot warmer during the Medieval Warm Period than it is now". Controversy over the "hockey stick" not withstanding, this is the warmest period in the last 1000 years. Even if you take into the low-ball errors of Mann's "Hockey Stick" you can't decisively say that the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than today. Also, scientists aren't saying there "may be" an effect. They are saying there *is* an effect. The anthropogenic signature on the weather over the past 30-40 years statistically relevant. They are not saying to reduce emissions as a "precaution" they are saying cut emissions by 90% to avert an unstoppable climate disaster. I think you've been reading too many American Enterprise Institute climate pseudo-science articles lately.

Considering just how much shit we have pumped into the atmosphere over the last 150 years, it must take a prodigious mental effort even to imagine that this would not exert a profound effect on the climate.

I can't argue against the researchers of weather patterns, but the thing that gets my attention is the physical shape of nature's most violent weather, the spiral.When I look at the shape I see the form that is present throughout the universe repeated over and over. The spiral is a gathering of energy and ultimatly it seems to become a destructive force.Can it be assumed that by generating a spiral, the forces with-in and with-out this dimension are actually ripping open rifts to travel here? I would point to the countless examples of spiral forms that are present in the universe, and even in historical/ religeous art. The top story is what we always focus on, but underneath..unseen by the naked eye, there are forces using simple methods to slip into this realm. You dont have to belive this, but I would bet a closer examination of this wierdness would reveal more than we now know.

March on, symbolic host! With step sublime,Up to the flaming bounds of Space and Time!There pause, until by Dickenson depicted,In two dimensions, we the form may traceOf him whose soul, too large for vulgar space,In n dimensions flourished unrestricted."

-- James Clerk MaxwellTo the Committee of the Cayley Portrait Fund -- 1887

i'm so glad someone mention Hoagland's hurricane models. i had been checking his blog for Katrina material, and am glad there's something up now! i spent all yesterday monitoring satellite imagery for those anomalous angles. i couldn't find close-ups as good as the one of Isabel, but i believe the gemometry presented itself more than once in the images i was able to find. the angles would appear when the storm's eye compressed and disappeared when the eye opened.

i don't know enough about weather manipulation to comment -- i'll be reading that material today, thankyou -- but i know enough about natural systems to know that right angles and pentagrams appearing in rotating systems, must be significant. my intuition tells me there's something in the geometry that is useful and Hoag is the only researcher who has touched this aspect of natural systems. digging deeper into my amorphous intuition, i wonder what power could be harnassed by getting a grip on this. and why the hell does venus draw a pentagram around the earth every eight years? what did the mystery schools know about sacred geometry? what's the significance of the pentagon? the pentagram? 19.5? the answer spins around us all the time.

I screwed up my Google search link for orgonite before, so here it is again. I personally recommend reading through Whale.to and Educate-Yourself.org. E-Y also features an excellent (although somewhat outdated) introduction to a do-it-yourself chemtrail solution, if anybody's interested. Users have aimed these things directly at incoming storms such as this hurricane and have seen it rapidly lose steam and dissipate within minutes to hours. This stuff is real.

I'm not sure how to resolve, in myself, the significant changes in weather I've noticed over the past 30 years, (since I moved into the north, where weather in winter is noticeable), but I am also concerned with the ozone layer, and the resultant possible effects on populations. I agree that positive energy, and possible orgonite energy may have a degree of positive effect in our lives, and am energized by people who mention these things. One the other hand, all the positive energy in the world isn't going to repair the damage to populations already affected by radiation, both man-made and natural. The earth has suffered terrible rifts in its' atmosphere, oceans, and crust in the past, and will always heal itself; it's simply our interests in self-preservation that fuel this furor. It always amazes me that humans actually care to explore and use weapons and techniques which alter/destroy the very habitat they will depend on for survival...and then strive to inhabit other realms and habitats with this same mental/physical/spiritual energy which got them needing to change environments?? After all, what have humans really done that's such a bang-up job of preserving and propagating their own creative destiny without fueling their own projections? I think it would be truly hell, (and rather gratifying to watch, if I could) for our political leaders and schemers to have to live with the results of their actions. Just a few thoughts...;)

"A radiocarbon-dated box core in the Sargasso Sea shows that sea surface temperature was approximately 1°C cooler than today approximately 400 years ago (the Little Ice Age) and 1700 years ago, and approximately 1°C warmer than today 1000 years ago (the Medieval Warm Period) [10]"

Surface temps from the time have been estimated as being anything from 1-4 degrees warmer than today.

It simply was warmer during the Medieval Warm Period than now; just as it was colder during the Little Ice Age, and even the max amount of modern warming claimed from the surface record is presently well within 'normal' limits.

Guys, you people are usually so open to new thinking; don't get blind to the possibility that here - as elsewhere - there could be interests groups manipulating things.

Don't lose sight of the evidence that doesn't fit the conventional picture.

I'm not claiming any certainties, just trying to open out the debate here. Things are not as simple or as certain as they are so often presented as being. It could be (just could be) that when we jump on this bandwagon we are being just as suckered as Joe Everyman watching Fox News.

Atmospheric tinkering aside, does anyone find it chilling to see the poor of an American city being rounded up into a sport stadium? I saw images of them being herded like cattle into the Superdome by National Gaurd troops wearing cammoflauge. The response thus far has been short of that mobilized for Andrew, given that 30% of their units are stationed in Iraq. One soldier said, "we'll be here as long as it takes."

For a moment it seemed like a reasonable thing to do. However, more reasonable would have been rounding up every bus in the area and pointing them north on the public dime, many of which will be released by disaster declaration.

Considering how much public money (and debate) is being used to construct stadiums, many in cities that already have perfectly good ones such as the Minneapolis Metrodome, I find this disturbing. Perhaps I've been reading this site too long, but what if baseball revenue and low-wage service industry jobs weren't the real driving force behind new stadium construction?

I remember people getting all excited during the Clinton admin, claiming there were hundereds of interrment camps being set-up all over the U.S. for nefarious reasons we can only guess at now. Is it less incidious if you can play baseball in it?

With regards to motivation for activating HAARP for such a performance, how about diverting attention away from a certain Supreme Court nominee?

venus passes between the earth and the sun every 584 days.. each time this happens, the sun, venus and the earth line up, two-fifths of of the larger zodiac, so a pentagram of conjunctions is "drawn" every eight years. earth is the stationary point -- we see venus as it orbits the sun, making this design across the sky. of course, we don't see this with our eyes, but we know this by drawing the orbits out on paper. think spirograph.

There are a few things that trouble me about the content of our "movement". We are allowing ourselves to be stuck in the past instead of actually acting in opposition to these evil forces we keep describing. To oppose these evil forces we must: minimize taxes we pay (STOP FEEDING THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX), stop funding news organizations and their owners/manipulators (i.e. the sources that cover-up the truth about 9-11, kennedy, bush, etc...), stop purchasing food that destroys the environment/are complicit in the corrupt economic tactics of the United States, increase awareness of how harmful the united states is and has always been (the "news" that gov't and corrupt organizations put on are meant to keep the potential opposition (us!) from becoming kinetic.It is not really a useful activity to read about the leaks in the corruption. Every single one is a slap in the face. Like the rodney king tape was a slap in the face to the black community from the racist fascist LAPD, so are WTC 7 and Hani Hanjour's "alleged" aeronautical acrobatics. Who is actively opposing the horrible things we read about every day on this blog? Who reading this has actually minimized the taxes he pays? Well why the fuck haven't you? there are many legal loopholes. Any moral qualms you have can be soothed by donating that money to a charity (obviously the moral superior of paying taxes). Move to another country if you can. There are many options that you are not employing while you directly fund the CIA. YOU ARE DIRECTLY FUNDING THE CIA EVERY YEAR. DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND THAT?! STOP DOING IT. JUST STOP. JESUS FUCKING CHRIST. Now this probably is the wrong audience, but for fun any of you that buy afghani opium or heroin maybe you should stop. Stop buying oil if you can - drive bio diesel or get a hybrid or bike or something but stop giving money to the bad guys. Yes the bad guys are everywhere but every step to stop funding them must be taken and stop using the fucking argument about an individuals actions not capable of completely reversing the system. the only way to reverse the system is to have individuals oppose it. furthermore, each specific action has a reaction for each dollar you pay in taxes there actually is directly related to the amount a death toll so every dollar counts. we can not keep allowing the argument "i have decided to fill my life with things other than being a conscious consumer" this argument is garbage. What should obviously be the focus of the conversation are the specific harms each individual does through each payment of federal taxes or other direct endorsement of evil action and the individuals complete complicity in this process. Look inside yourself and your action. Stop complaining about how all the democrats and republicans are sheep and slaves when you remain both slave and sheep. over and out

Dear Ellie, The "Medieval Warm Period" you referred to is not generally accepted as a global phenomenon. If you'd like to refer to the Wikipedia web site, it says "It was initially believed that the temperature changes were global. However, this view has been questioned; the 2001 IPCC report summarises this research, saying: "…current evidence does not support globally synchronous periods of anomalous cold or warmth over this timeframe, and the conventional terms of 'Little Ice Age' and 'Medieval Warm Period' appear to have limited utility in describing trends in hemispheric or global mean temperature changes in past centuries" [1]." It's hard to imagine that pumping know greenhouse gases into the atmosphere such that it increases by %100 will NOT effect the climate.-rjh

Warming is the wrong term, anyway. Melt from the poles could affect warm water currents by making water less saline and less dense. These new currents could actually cause areas such as England to cool. So 'climate change' is a better term.

Anonymous One, I think Jack Parsons used the HD weather on old Hubbard when he tried to leave Miami,with Jacks old lady and the money. You don't think these guys could create a tempest,could they? When the men in black took Jack out they had good reason,later.

Dear Anonymous,please do the research! the Medieval Warm Period has ALWAYS been regarded as a global phenomenon - until the Mann 'Hockey Stick' unilaterally wiped it out.

The claim that the MWP was 'local' was just a nonsensical bit of statistic manipulation - to give Mann some spurious basis for claiming we are living in a time of unprecedented warming. No real evidence for this sudden 'discovery' has been offered and it has all the hallmarks of being just made up to fit a desire to believe - and make others believe - we are in a unique condition.

As you know, Mann's 'Hockey Stick' graph, which was the foundation of the whole claim of unique 'anthropogenic climate change' is coming under increasing criticism from many reputatble scientists and Mann himslef is beginnign to distance himself from it.

I am very much afraid if we are prepared to follow any doomsday prophecy, however hysterical and poorly documented, we are making ourselves foolish and ineffective in dealing with the real and massive challenges.

Once again - no one denies the earth is warming. It has been since the late 19th C as a result of the end of the Little Ice Age. But no one has yet shown that any of the warming is unusual, or anything other than natural. The maximum temp rise claimed is well within normal limits, and still puts us well behing the MWP. Of course in future such evidence may develop - but equally well it may not.

Don't forget, no one has yet even proved that increased CO2 in the atmosphere is even a cause of warming and not an effect! That is how little we actually really know about what is going on.

The current media frenzy is just induced panic based on poorly understood and exaggerated science. I think we need to ask who is selling this spin and maybe why - and not just buy it unconditionally.

I wish someone would just get a little bit of this, and not just keep on with the hysterical predictions as if the facts weren't there at all.

That's what I've come to expect from many human beings - but not you guys here.

Ellie

It's just that no one has yet shown that there is anything different about the i do agree it makes sense to cut back on the use of fossil fuels, for many many reasons, i just can see the evidence doesn't offer any reason to believe

But even if ti were true - how can this mean we don't put in

Sorry, but to me this whole panic looks just as spun as most of the other stuff the popular media is selling, and it alarms me that there are so few people even here who seem to see that.

Dear Anonymous,please do the research! the Medieval Warm Period has ALWAYS been regarded as a global phenomenon - until the Mann 'Hockey Stick' unilaterally wiped it out.

The claim that the MWP was 'local' was just a nonsensical bit of statistic manipulation - to give Mann some spurious basis for claiming we are living in a time of unprecedented warming. No real evidence for this sudden 'discovery' has been offered and it has all the hallmarks of being just made up to fit a desire to believe - and make others believe - we are in a unique condition.

As you know, Mann's 'Hockey Stick' graph, which was the foundation of the whole claim of unique 'anthropogenic climate change' is coming under increasing criticism from many reputatble scientists and Mann himslef is beginnign to distance himself from it.

I am very much afraid if we are prepared to follow any doomsday prophecy, however hysterical and poorly documented, we are making ourselves foolish and ineffective in dealing with the real and massive challenges.

Once again - no one denies the earth is warming. It has been since the late 19th C as a result of the end of the Little Ice Age. But no one has yet shown that any of the warming is unusual, or anything other than natural. The maximum temp rise claimed is well within normal limits, and still puts us well behing the MWP. Of course in future such evidence may develop - but equally well it may not.

Don't forget, no one has yet even proved that increased CO2 in the atmosphere is even a cause of warming and not an effect! That is how little we actually really know about what is going on.

The current media frenzy is just induced panic based on poorly understood and exaggerated science. I think we need to ask who is selling this spin and maybe why - and not just buy it unconditionally.

I wish someone would just get a little bit of this, and not just keep on with the hysterical predictions as if the facts weren't there at all.

That's what I've come to expect from many human beings - but not you guys here.

I've been open-minded to the information that you and others present, but I've not been convinced. It's not been lack of consideration or open mindedness It is still interesting to read your information.

I've even questioned my conclusions about global warming and climate change because I realize that I like all people, suffer from the psychological phemomena at play here - ego-defensive attitudes, cognitive dissonance, overconfidence... same stuff that keep the stock market rolling.

In the end, I work most against my psychological tendancy for analysis-paralysis. So after reading much on both sides of climate change, I decided that global warming is real and it is caused in part by human activity. Frankly when Bush said it wasn't real, that sort of cemented my view that human activities have increased the rate of climate change.

It sounds like there is agreement that humans can mitigate the effects right now. I think the human race will get things wrong as we deal with the climate change due to conflicting and missing data, but that is our way - we will also get things right - close enough for jazz.

What are your ideas on how to mitigate the effects of the climate change? - just curious.

So, ellie, how much you getting paid by Exxon-Mobil to troll blogs and put out the company/Bush line that global warning is not really happening? Here's a little somthing to think about--Hurricane Andrew, which was one of the most destructive storms in American history, was denoted with an "A" as the first storm of the season. This year, hurricanse season has several months to go, and we are already up to "K". No global warming. Nothing to see here, citizens. Move along now.

Interesting how it somewhat fits into what others here have said about 9/11 and HAARP. The skies were crystal clear for several days after 9/11 when all, or most, air traffic was grounded, and guess what? The freakin average temperatures rose in statistically anomolous fashion.

Just when you thought it couldn't get any deeper, it does. It's so deep there is no measure for its depth....in fact, it's meaningless to even discuss it in terms of deep or depth. Our limited capacity allows us to only see logarythmic shadows of logarythmic shadows.

Dear Ellie, Your paranoia notwithstanding, I suggest you do your own research. Mann had little to do with the research pointing out the LIA and MWP are regional phenomena. What was new about Mann's work is that it went beyond the temperature reconstructions of the Northern Hemisphere. Just because you've been contradicted doesn't give you the latitude to make up stories about Mann's research being the only research that shows anthropogentically influenced global warming. His was one of many such evidence of man-made warming - from modeling studies and Carbon-13 studies of ocean uptake of oil-based CO2. Instead of throwing about such unsubstantiated claims of "nonsensical bit of statistic[al] manipulation" why don't you pull yourself away from the oil-funded websites and look at all the studies that have been done.For a sampling please review the papers in this list and get back to us.-rjh

By the way, Michael Mann refutes the McIntyre and McKitrick paper that supposedly "contradicts" his "Hockey Stick" paper and which Ellie alludes to here "Following the all-too-familiar pattern, this deeply flawed paper was heavily promoted by special interests as somehow challenging the scientific consensus that humans are altering the climate (an excellent account is provided by science journalist Dan Vergano of USA Today here). As detailed already on the pages of RealClimate, this so-called 'correction' was nothing more than a botched application of the MBH98 procedure, where the authors (MM) removed 80% of the proxy data actually used by MBH98 during the 15th century period (failing in the process to produce a reconstruction that passes standard "verification" procedures--an error that is oddly similar to that noted by Benestad (2004) with regard to another recent McKitrick paper). Indeed, the bizarre resulting claim by MM of anomalous 15th century warmth (which falls within the heart of the "Little Ice Age") is at odds with not only the MBH98 reconstruction, but, in fact the roughly dozen other estimates now published that agree with MBH98 within estimated uncertainties."

there is no global warming debate. people who claim it isn't being accelerated by humans are on the Exxon payrole. this isn't just about hurricanes. this is about glacial ice melting at both poles as well as Kilamanjaro; this is about ice that melts so fast up north that the spring thaw and the entire water cycle has been disrupted and caused innuits great harm. Global warming is here and the longer it's ignored the more ferocious will be the militant measures exacted upon the populace by the state. Everyone follows the precautionary principle, the question is whether it'll be rational or terrified.

years ago all the jerk-offs bulldozing our estuaries were reading from their Heritage Fndtn talking points, raising hell about government 'takings.' now the supreme court tells us wal*mart and whoever else can take whatever they want, but you can bet some people will still holler about protecting our air and water, our soil and biodiversity. enough is enough--either we make social change equitable and livable, or the PTB will make it into a deadly reformation of power.

The warmer ocean temps could be the result of increased volcanic activity in the oceans. I read somewhere (maybe on one of those oil-funded websites) that this is a harbinger of the next ice age, which could come at any time and suddenly. I can't remember the name of the website. Sorry. But the author postulated that this is what killed the dinosaurs -- not a meteor or other blast.

I don't doubt that there is global warming. But the long term effects can't be predicted due to other changes that are occurring.

Our view on climate is certainly not that of a skeptic and was summarized in the testimony I gave to a Subcommittee of the U.S. House http://energycommerce.house.gov/107/hearings/07252002Hearing676/Pielke,Sr.1144.htm. I presented this view as President of the American Association of State Climatologists, and was representing this professional organization.

Our research has clearly demonstrated that human activities have very significant effects on local, regional and global climate. What we have shown, however, is that the important climate forcings include the radiative effect of CO2, but also include other first-order climate forcings such as the biogeochemical effect of additional CO2, land use/land cover change and the diverse effects of aerosol emissions. To define me as a “climate skeptic” is completely wrong. Indeed, by including the diversity of climate forcings, those who focus primarily on CO2 as the anthropogenic climate forcing are the true climate skeptics.

All that matters is (1) are global temperatures rising to a disruptive degree and (2) what can we as responsible, sentient members of our ecosystem do about it?

One way or another, it seems to be time for us humans to accept stewardship of the planet and run it in a way that maximizes the well-being and creative potential of all life-forms. 'Cause if we don't, there sure ain't nobody gonna do it for us.

It's not beyond our ability. In the early Neolithic, every time the climate turned cool and dry farming crashed out and people went back to hunting and gathering. But that hasn't happened since 6000 BC The early civilizations also collapsed regularly when times turned tough -- but we've been able to keep civilization on an even keel for the last several millenia as well.

Over the past 200 years, we've become aware of some of the more serious long-term threats to life on earth -- and we've been putting a lot of energy (on both the mythic and the technological levels) into working out how to deal with those threats.

So let's accept that global warming is real, stop trying to assign blame, and just do what we need to before New York City drowns or the Gulf Stream switches off and plunges Europe into a new ice age.

while you're trying to figure out if it's natural or not.. What's the possibility of Port Fourchon getting destroyed going to do to the already frightful oil prices? 75 percent of all the deepwater oil and gas production in the Gulf gone POOF isn't what we need right now.

Is this weather "manufactured"? Well of course it is! How many burning oil fields have cast up their black clouds, how many DU weapons have screwed up the ozone.. The only way to figure out if they're being steered is to watch what they wreck and who benefits.

Oil isn't the only winner. How about High-Priced Real Estate Development.

Al Hoffman, a World War II Figher Pilot cum Real Estate mogul, is the Chairman of The Board of WCI Communities. WCI, a developer of high-end Real Estate, has recently expanded land acquisition to the Northern Florida Coast and The Alabama Coast. They have purchased a ton of land and they are just sitting on it. For what are they waiting? Does Al have insider info.?

Al is good friends with the Bushes, and he is a highly influential Fat Cat Bankroller for the Republican Party.

Manufacturing the Weather can help the few in so many ways.....sometimes more ways than meets the eye....or eyewall.

sillydog said..."Atmospheric tinkering aside, does anyone find it chilling to see the poor of an American city being rounded up into a sport stadium? I saw images of them being herded like cattle into the Superdome by National Gaurd troops wearing cammoflauge."

Chilling even more than that, is the fact that they have now declared martial law in New Orleans late today. As soon as I heard they were bringing poor people to a stadium for "safety", my suspicions immediately peaked. They leave no opportunity unused and take advantage of any situations where a dependant public can be field-tested on.

Notwithstanding, around the world stadiums are the premiere staging area for round up and torture of civillians by death squads, the military and police. Partictularly in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Sierra Leone, etc.

That being said, the stage is being set. The stadium was a convenient exercise in concentration camp round-up, confinement and inmate observation.

Did they complain or organize amongst themselves?

How long can they take the heat, bacteria, stench discomfort, lack of food?

How many guards does it take to keep them in order?

To Anonymous 6:02 pm:Thanks for your excellent commentary and righteous indignation. Your analysis was absolutely cognizant and clear visioned. The vice is getting tighter... right here, right now on our tangible, and inescapably physical plane. Today the precedent has been established, here in America... MARTIAL LAW! It is now a joint police/military exercise coordinated by FEMA. All that remains after this test is what will set off the regional or national? The Bird Flu pandemic? or a completely different government CBW (Chemical Biological Warfare) vectored in it's guise. Or will the hammer come down after a murderous sequel to the 9/11 and 7/7 cabal-engineered, synthetic terror attacks?

At what point does information entertainment transcend into stark reality and concerted strategies for our collective survival?

"...in early 1990, the weather engineering operations over North America were assumed from the FSB/KGB by the Yakuza/Aum Shinrikyo teams, and operations continued with the Yakuza's leased giant scalar interferometers."

-http://www.weatherwars.info/

I've have absolutely no idea whether this is true or not, but either way it's hilarious.

Actually, it makes sense with the cult, mafia, and intelligence being involved, but if true, usG (G as in gangsta) has to be involved and LIHOP, at the very least. It makes sense when viewed from the waltenschlong (sorry, I'm a comedian today) that the world's elites are working in tandem with evil to systematically corrupt the souls and destroy the bodies of the untermensch.

My thought process is truly frightening for how logical it is. But, hey, don't call me crazy on the 4th of July.

The last time I watched Nightline I think was 9/11 but I watched tonight, since I don't have cable, for an update on Katrina.

Looking at the buildings reduced to matchsticks, Interstate 10 washed away by water,watching the interviews with people crying and saying they lost everything...it made me take the situation here only a few miles from the San Andreas fault moreseriously than the 1989 Loma Prieta quake I experienced here did.

Worst case scenario, an 8+ pointer, the bridges will collapse or wash away, therewill be no way off the Peninsula except south on 101, 280 or El Camino, there maybe no gas (by the way, tonight for the first time I saw pump it yourself regularfor over 3 bucks, as in $3.07) to get very far, and where would I go anyway? I haveabout 30 cents in my pocket so if the ATMs are out I'm screwed.

What if it happened...NOW!

If the house just collapsed.

If the gas mains blew and started a fire.

If the water mains blew and flooded the property.

If the edge of the Bay which is landfill liquefies and the water of the Bay poursin...will it reach this far?

I have my photographs in a box, and my genealogy papers, and my important papers.Three boxes, and a bad back that might mean I couldn't lift at least two of themwithout help.

The carport could collapse on my truck. The oak tree could fall on the carport, and my truck. The oak tree could fall the other way and hit the house. It could fall a third way and block the driveway so I couldn't drive out. It could fall afourth way and miss anything I care about.

I have only 3 gallons of springwater (meant for the fish) and another 2 bottles of carbonated mineral water forme. I have half a sandwich, a couple of stuffed grape leaves, and 2 pieces of pizzawhich would go bad fast if the refrigerator failed. I have no canned goods includingextra cat food. I do have an emergency kit in the trunk with a first aid kit, batteries,and a few other things. Two of my cats are ferals who would probably run away. My indoor catmight get out if the cottage is damaged, and his tag just fell off the last few days and I haven't been able to find it. My goldfish needs a water change every other dayin warm weather. He can't live in the tap water which contains chloramine. If I can't afford mineral water, or the stores are out, he will die.

The nearest person who might put me up who does not live in this area is in LA. If the ultimate catastrophe happened and the San Andreas ruptured in multiple places,forget that. After that, I have a cousin in Junction City, Kansas. At 3 bucks a gallon, I'm not going to get there.

The Big One might not happen in my lifetime. It may never happen. But it might. And it could be me sitting by a roadside crying that everything is gone. I don'thave much, but that just makes what I do have more precious. Especially my animals,since I have no immediate family, they are my family.

By and large our attitude as a nation has been the motto of The Big Easy: Laissezle bontemps rouler, let the good times roll. And don't plan much for the bad times,if at all. Just believe it can't happen to you, it can't happen here, the governmentwill bail us out.

As for the government--things are worse than they're saying. I just watched an interviewin which the speakers' lip movements didn't match what they were allegedly saying,and it wasn't just a glitch. At another point, they suddenly cut away to a commercialin the middle of a talk by Kathleen Blanco, the governor of Louisiana. Accident?What did she say? (And dare I say, once again, where is George? Why isn't he at the side of Governor Blanco?)

And of course BushCo tells us global warming is a myth and that the last hurricaneseason and this one that has already broken records are a fluke, not connected tosomething bad that is happening to the Gulf Stream. No, they're all about quack science and justifying criminal stupidity in the name of Jesus Christ.

No, I ain't relying on the fucking government.

I'm not headed for the roof on a suffocatingly hot night to escape slowly risingtoxic water and maybe a shark or two, with an axe in my hand to break out if I haveto, if a helicopter or boat comes by to save me. I'm just sitting on the edge ofa fault that separates two continental plates that could shake my world apart likea retarded gorilla with a cheap toy.

Cassandra, your message touched a nerve with me. Forgive me if I'm being presumptious, but maybe that's because it reminded me of myself a few years ago.

It took me years to admit to myself that I didn't like my life, that being alone was killing me. I had some friends and a goldfish (no cats), but I needed to feel part of the fabric of a family, a community. Thoughts of my future triggered amorphous and overwhelming fears, so that my instinctive response was to distract myself.

Because I didn't know how to start, or even WHAT to start, I pretended to myself and others that I liked being alone and free as a bird.

Inside I was actually cowering in a small box, walled by the limitations of my imagination and courage.

Eventually, my unhappiness grew so big it knocked down the walls of my box. Like the song says, "Freedom's just another word for 'nothing left to lose'"

Underlying many of the comments here, is the assumption that Evil has free reign to do what it wants, unopposed and limited only by its own will. That makes no sense to me, nor does it conform to my experience.

My experience is this: even when we are sure that we are small, helpless and alone, we are not. It's an illusion, no matter how convincing it is. And the only way to destroy an illusion is to call its bluff.

You can't do that all at once, at least I couldn't. It's a process that begins when we dare to face our own feelings, examining them with a curious but detached objectivity, accepting that they are there.

But facing one's one unease or unhappiness is only the first step and, other than building up one's courage, it doesn't require that you actually DO anything.

The second step is much, much harder, and takes the longest time and more sustained effort: figuring out what you DO want. Picturing yourself happy, strong, fulfilled, free to be yourself, valued.

The third step flows almost effortlessly from the second: seeking out those things, activities and people in your life that contribute positive energy, avoiding whenever possible those things which deplete you. Some trial and error is involved here.

At this point, nothing has really changed outside your head -- but in cosmic terms, everything has changed already. Your energy level is higher, life begins to seem more mysterious and fascinating. As Paulo Cuelho says in "The Alchemist", the 'universe conspires' to help you achieve your dream(s).

With me, miracles started to happen -- nothing fancy, but amazing and wonderful nonetheless. They energized me even more. The 'little miracles' also provided me with a sense of purpose, of rightness, and of being guided and protected.

As I got from point A to point B, things and encounters that seemed completely random later revealed themselves to be precisely calibrated and coordinated to form part of a perfect design.

Many years later, my life has been so wonderfully strange, it is so full of blessings that were inconceivable to me back when I first admitted that I didn't like my life.

Bush, being a liar, which makes sense, since he serves the Great Deceiver, said, "You are either with us or with the terrorists."

The original slogan is more accurate: "you are either part of the solution, or you are part of the problem". Those who are enslaved inside their heads by their fears, by their laziness, or pettiness, are part of the problem, and a big help to the Bad Guys.

By freeing yourself, you make your energy and unique abilities available to contribute to the freeing of others. You become one more counterweight to the zombies and those who sow death and despair wherever they go.

And finally, the big paradox: after the struggle, the miracles, after you've obtained whatever it was your heart craved, you discover that what you thought was the goal is merely icing on the cake. It's beautiful, it's precious, but even if it's all taken away (and it can be), you will be left with the real treasure you have extracted from your life, that can never be taken away from you: your transformed self.

A self who has experienced the mystery and the magic and the love, who now knows that there is meaning and purpose at the heart of your particular existence and is determined to seek it, knowing that you will be provided with what you need to find it.

A small but very powerful book, "Man's Search for Meaning" was first published in 1947 by psychiatrist Viktor E. Frankl, survivor of four Nazi concentration camps.

Faced with the loss of everything he cared about and the murder of his wife, his father, mother and brother, Frankl used his background as a psychiatrist to mentally transform himself from a despairing victim to a thoughtful observer of the dynamics of a concentration camp and its inmates.

He made himself view his ordeal as an opportunity to discover what factors determine whether an individual succumbs to despair, joins the ranks of the victimizers or, against all odds, in the midst of unbearable horror, becomes a powerful (and life-affirming) example to others, of dignity and honour.

"Sigmund Freud once asserted, 'Let one attempt to expose a number of the most diverse people uniformly to hunger. With the increase of the imperative urge of hunger all individual differences will blur, and in their stead will appear the uniform expression of the unstilled urge.'

Thank heaven, Sigmund Freud was spared knowing the concentration camps from the inside. His subjects lay on a couch designed in the plush style of Victorian culture, not in the filth of Auschwitz. There, the 'individual differences' did NOT 'blur' but, on the contrary, people became more different; people unmasked themselves, both the swine and the saints."

"...A human being is not one thing among others; THINGS determine each other, but MAN is ultimately self-determining. What he becomes -- within the limits of endowment and environment -- he has made out of himself. In the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself; which one is actualized depends on decisions but not on conditions."

Alice, what a wonderful post! You and I seem to have commonalities. Please feel free to drop me an email at:

keithmallorynz@yahoo.com

I don't watch a lot of TV but I've watched some tonight on Katrina, and I feel incredibly fortunate, I don't have much materially but compared to those people walking along chest deep in water with nothing but the filthy clothes they're standing up in have nothing, and the people at the Superdome with their little bags of belongings have nowhere to go but another 'dome' that may be their home for months to come. Already the media are calling it a 'refugee camp.'

I also read a horribly disturbing link from the AntiDefamation League quoting all sorts of vile rightwingnut white supremacist garbage, rejoining that the "groids" (blacks), fags, "latrines" (apparently their term for Latinos) are dead, frothing about the coverage by the "Jew" media....you find yourself hoping these people are a microscopic minority, just a handful of sick evil loons, not just the vocal tip of an iceberg that feels the same way, that Katrina was good because it did 'ethnic cleansing'. It made me think, if this hurricane WAS manmade, of some cabal sitting in an underground bunker somewhere looking at a map of the coastlines where hurricanes could come ashore and choosing NOLA.

Also makes me think of the same people, planning 9/11, and maybe planning some kind of apocalyptic event for the West Coast. San Francisco is only 7 miles by 7 miles, and chock full of fags and liberals.

I love NHL. and recently I have bought stock in it. Not like real stock on Wall street, but a stock market that is strictly for sports.

You have seen it? Its pretty cool. You buy issues for your favorite teams and you make real money. Not like a fake stock simulator. I cash out Dividends each time the team wins. Also I can sell my team stock when the price goes up.

check it out if something like this interests you.heres a link http://allsportsmarket.comyou can log in and check it out for free..

They just released IPO'S for NHL this week, so there are alot of good deals there.

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